Carl Stevens' Journal: A Christmas Poem
This year has been strange, almost from the start,
A lot of things happened that tore us apart.
The United States weren't united at all,
We swore in the spring and lashed out in the fall.
We indicted each other for a series of crimes
That ran 'round the tracks of our one-track minds.
The race for the White House was ugly and long,
And blurred the distinction between right and wrong.
We split into colors: me against you,
A constant collision of red and blue.
But now we have Christmas, and from what I've seen
I wish we could focus on red and green,
On the whispers of magic in a child's head,
On the sight of a baby in a manger bed.
At the end of this year that's had such fuss,
Let's pause for what's greater in all of us:
The star that rose in a Bethlehem sky
Is shining bright still...it will never die.
Long before Clinton and Trump filled the air,
A greater name turned the foul to fair,
A name that placed goodness on mortality's platter,
That said to us all: "the little stuff don't matter."
What matters is a child's eyes at dawn,
The footsteps on a stairway coming down,
Focus on the lights of an evergreen,
On the spirit of an everlasting beam
That blossoms today and shines all year long,
It shines from us all, from the weak and the strong,
From Democrats, Republicans, states red and blue...
The goodness that's there, in me and you.
This year has been tough, and tore us apart...
But today let's focus on that star:
That salvation star that fills our spiritual sky,
And sparkles like Christmas in a child's eye.
Listen to Carl's poem:
